I've recently fished some old recommendations out of my "to read" bookmarks folder. Unfortunately, I don't remember where they all originally came from. I think quite a few from forestofglory (and some from rmc28?) -- thank you for filtering recently-published short stories through to me!
Monkey King, Faerie Queen by Zen ChoThis was lovely! Sun Wukong the Monkey King accidentally visits the court of the Fae. I don't know enough to say, but it seemed to really capture the well-meaning but mischievous and competitive spirit of the Monkey King, and fit neatly into the existing stories about him. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to combine the Faerie Queen and Sun Wukong without the story just falling apart into inconsistency but it was really good.
Paper Menagerie by Ken LiuI've been hearing more about Ken Liu from author-type blogs this year and have felt overdue in actually reading anything by him. IIRC he has a novel out recently, Grace of Kings (?), and also translated Three Body Problem, one of the first major Chinese science fiction novels to be translated into English, which was vaguely old-school in a good way and up for lots of awards this year.
This is about a young man whose mother was Chinese, "bought" and brought to America by his father, and folds magically-animated origami animals for him, and his complicated relationship to his Chinese heritage.
La Santisima by Teresa FrohockA family, mostly teenage siblings, their different personalities and relationships, their increasing inability to pay for necessary medical costs for one sister, an icon of La Santa Muerte, death, who watches over those everyone else has abandoned. And the attempt to cross the desert to earn enough to give them a chance.